Alternative Vegetable Gardening

My Square Foot Garden Last Year

I love to grow things, both food and ornamental.  I grew up living next to my maternal grandparents.  Grandad grew 1-1/2 acres of food every spring and summer and I could usually be found, tagging after him, barefoot, in the freshly plowed soil.  I would help him plant seeds, hoe rows, harvest, and most importantly, drive the tractor!  What fun!  He grew the vegetables in the traditional wide-row format and I am so thankful that I was able to experience that style of vegetable gardening first hand.

From the time I moved out on my own, I always tried to grow some sort of edible in a container at my apartment.  Sometimes, it might only be a few herbs; other years, I might plant a cucumber or tomato plant in a pot with a trellis.  I really felt the need to reconnect with the sense of purpose I had from my youth in Grandad's garden.  When I bought a house, I was brimming with enthusiasm because I finally had enough space to grow a "real" garden!  The following spring, I borrowed my dad's tiller and with some help from my beloved, broke ground and planted onions, potatoes, radishes, turnips, green beans, peppers, and tomatoes.  Most all of the crops were successful and we enjoyed eating the fresh produce.  However, the most prominent memory from that summer was my inability to keep the garden weeded;  I just simply did not have enough time to keep it tilled, hoed, and weeded while working a full-time job.  And, I remembered that Grandad had been retired, and usually spent the greater portion of the day in the garden.

After that summer, I began searching for alternative methods of raising produce.  I found a book on square foot gardening and a dear friend gave me a copy of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible.  These books inspired me to rethink my traditional ideas of gardening.  An image began to form in my mind of a lovely fenced-in plot surrounded by a flower border and accessed through a vine-covered arbor.  Within the fence were symmetrical beds separated by walkways wide enough for a wheel-barrow.  I began looking at the different raised beds available.  Many of the plastic and composite wood ones were really expensive and the plain wood ones were not very inspiring because I knew they would eventually rot and have to be replaced.  Then, I saw an article in a magazine about a square foot garden bed built out of concrete cinderblocks.  The bed was 4' square and two blocks high.  The owner had laid matching pavers along the top of the cinderblocks to create a lovely seat on which to sit while harvesting and weeding.  Eureka!  I had found my solution!

I have grown veggies in this raised bed for the past two years and am highly pleased with the results.  I hope to build more in the future to make my fenced-in garden dream a reality.